How long should I wait to send out the second round of queries?

Why wait on a "round" to send stuff out?

Keep a record (date sent, what kind of a response if any) who you've sent to, and as you find a new name to query, send off your stuff. Make it a constant thing. A query a week means you've got 52 of them in circulation.

Two months is not long at all. Yeah, the website or guidelines may say two weeks or so, but that's got little to do with reality.

Make sure you constantly have queries circulating. That way if you get a rejection you say, "So what? I've got 51 others out there."

And while you wait WORK ON THE NEXT BOOK.

If an agent falls in love with your stuff she'll want to know what else you have finished.

If you get a comment in the margins, take it as manna from on high, and use it.

It took two years, several complete rewrites, and I was well into my third book before I got the phone call. By publishing standards that was lightning fast! During that two years I was working, not waiting.

The comment that turned things was an agent telling me (in a nice way) "I just couldn't sympathize with the character."

I took it to heart, added ONE LINE, and the next time out it sold. They bought the other novels at the same time.

Good luck!

I agree, just keep sending them... (Until you get a "yes" of course.)

Yeah, why wait? Do it now!

Gillhoughlt, thanks for the advice. Now I have an idea of what to do.

I don't wait, I try to send queries out on a regular basis - though based on any possible comments in rejections, I might tweak the query. And I do personalize each query where necessary - sometimes make little alterations based on what the agent represents or looks for (changing key words, etc).

Some of them take from 6 months to a year to get back to you - waiting wouldn't help.

Go get 'em, tiger!

I'm in the midst of this myself, and I say wait.

Wait until you hear back from at least a couple more of those first five agents. The reason I say this is because I sent out about ten queries at once, and the query wasn't any good. I really thought it was good, and I was wrong. When I got a slew of form rejections, I figured it out. I put my query on a few critique sites (including the one here at AW), took the advice I received, and reworked that baby.

The first agent who got the revised query requested a full within hours of me sending it. NOW I'm going to query widely. Unfortunately, some of my top agent picks were in that first round of queries. Live and learn, right?

I agree with Melody. Send out email queries to agents that aren't on your A-list until you nail it and start getting requests for the partial or full. Then query to your heart's content.

Since it's only two, I'd keep querying. If you get half a dozen rejections, try to figure out if they're rejecting based on the query or the writing. Revise appropriately.

Prawn said:

The letter is as good as I can make it. I just thought I would give my first tier agents a chance to see my query first.

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I hear you loud and clear. Good luck with it, and do tell us how it goes!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but queries don't usually result in a slew of suggestions for rewriting things. That generally comes at the stage in which an agent likes your query and wants to see the manuscript. So I don't expect any real feedback from queries.

I think having some out at all times is a good way to go. The way my brain works, however, I get into one track and I just want to GO on it. So I spend 2 weeks JUST sending out queries (this of course after I have a good letter) and then I sit back and start writing again as the responses trickle in. I find that even doing this, the response times are so varied I might as well have a rotation schedule. Some agents take weeks, others take months to respond.